United Nations: Pakistan’s top diplomat has highlighted the lack of burden sharing as Pakistan hosts more than a million Afghan refugees while hosting the majority of refugees and displaced persons.
“Pakistan has received more than 5 million Afghan refugees in 40 years,” Ambassador Munir Akram said at a humanitarian affairs meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Tuesday.
“There are currently more than 1.4 million registered refugees, another 1 million are unregistered and thousands more are undocumented,” the Pakistani representative said.
At the same time, he said Pakistan would use its laws on illegal aliens in the country.
“Also, now that the conflict in Afghanistan has ended, we hope that the 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees will soon be repatriated under the fully funded UN program as promised a few years ago.”
According to him, the global humanitarian crisis is caused by the increasing effects of climate change, increasing conflicts and violations of international humanitarian law.
In this regard, he emphasized the importance of an early warning system to reduce the impact of climate disasters.
“After the 2022 floods, Pakistan has developed disaster forecasting capabilities 10 months in advance with forecasts in all domains.
“We have launched a special National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) program to guide the public and are ready to share a low-cost model for global use,” he said.
Pakistan’s representative called for increased humanitarian and climate finance, citing an initial pledge of $800 million for the Aids and Disasters Fund, but noted that this would require significant funding.
He also highlighted the importance of the Financial Framework for Risk Management launched at CoP28 and the need for policy coordination between climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and humanitarian action.
Ambassador Akram highlighted Pakistan’s Post-Flood Resilience, Recovery and Regeneration Plan (4RF) by 2022, saying that although $10.9 billion was pledged by the international community, only $6.5 billion has been implemented, 4 He said $4 billion was estimated and there tolerance component. . not provided
He praised the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and its partners for their response to the crisis, but noted the chronic financial gap, which has increased by 16%. He called on member states to establish an efficient, predictable and timely financing mechanism.
Ambassador Akram called for an integrated approach to peacekeeping, peacekeeping and peacebuilding to address the root causes of conflict.
Emphasizing the dire humanitarian crisis in neighboring Gaza and violations of international humanitarian law, he called for accountability for war crimes and genocide through appropriate judicial mechanisms to end impunity.
